Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
St. Louis at New York NL | 19:10 ET
Martinez (114.1 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Syndergaard (111.1 IP, 59 xFIP-)
Among the league’s 93 qualified starters, Carlos Martinez and Noah Syndergaard have recorded the third-highest and actual highest average fastball velocities. Who’s produced the second-highest fastball velocity? Click here to learn his identity. Alternatively, click here to learn your own identity by way of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Cleveland at Baltimore | 13:35 ET
Kluber (129.0 IP, 78 xFIP-) vs. Worley (51.1 IP, 104 xFIP-)
Vance Worley isn’t the precise name one expects to find headlining what is allegedly the day’s most compelling game. The score produced by the author’s haphazardly calculated algorithm for this particular contest, however, has less to do with the identity of Baltimore’s starter and more with its current place in the standings. No team is perched more precariously on the knife edge of postseason qualification than the Baltimore Orioles, which club features both divisional and wild-card odds in the vicinity of 50%. For more on that, read the author’s tortuous explanation of NERD’s ongoing playoff adjustment below. For less on that, do anything else that you want.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
New York NL at Miami | 19:10 ET
deGrom (102.0 IP, 81 xFIP-) vs. Fernandez (113.2 IP, 53 xFIP-)
Given where each club currently resides within this site’s playoff-odds projections, it’s probable that either the Mets or Marlins will qualify for some manner of postseason appearance. It’s improbable, on the other hand, that both will qualify. In this way, tonight’s game resembles that scene from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome where two men enter and then only one man leaves. How it differs from that 1985 film is that, instead of taking place in a lawless, post-apocalyptic Australian hellscape, it’ll actually just be in Miami.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles NL at St. Louis | 20:15 ET
McCarthy (16.0 IP, 59 xFIP-) vs. Wacha (109.1 IP, 96 xFIP-)
Left-hander Clayton Kershaw last pitched on June 26th. Brandon McCarthy first pitched on July 3rd. Kershaw has produced the lowest adjusted xFIP (52 xFIP-) among all qualified starters this year. McCarthy, over his three starts, has produced a nearly identical figure (59 xFIP-). Coincidence? Yes. Of course. Kershaw and McCarthy are two distinct people, often photographed in each other’s company — or near proximity, if nothing else. The have difference faces and bodies. And dreams. They likely have different dreams, too.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles NL at Washington | 12:05 ET
Urias (36.1 IP, 91 xFIP-) vs. Strasburg (114.2 IP, 75 xFIP-)
The best way to preserve and nurture a young basil plant is to cut the stem just above the second set of true leaves (also called a node). This will create a bifurcation of the stem, essentially doubling the output of the plant and leading to the “bushy” look customary of basil. Repeating this process every week or so nearly guarantees the cultivation of a healthy, productive plant.

The best way to preserve and nurture a young pitcher is a complete mystery. They don’t have stems, they don’t have true leaves, and “pruning” them is an offense punishable in a court of law. Julio Urias, who’s excellent and also young, recorded his last appearance in relief for Triple-A Oklahoma City after a series of promising starts for the Dodgers. Presumably to preserve his health, is why. Will it have the intended effect? Perhaps. One can only answer in probabilities — and even then, through research darkly.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles NL at Washington | 19:05 ET
Norris (86.1 IP, 96 xFIP-) vs. Gonzalez (103.1 IP, 96 xFIP-)
Norris has been fantastic over his first three starts for the Dodgers, recording strikeout and walk rates of 27.3% and 4.6%, respectively — the differential of which (22.7 points) would represent the sixth-best mark among baseball’s 96 qualified starters. The relatively quick pace at which they become stable, is why the author cites those metrics as a proxy for Norris’s brief career in Los Angeles. Because he’s a frightened and scurrying creature, is why the author does almost everything else.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
New York NL at Chicago NL | 19:05 ET
Syndergaard (105.2 IP, 59 xFIP-) vs. Arrieta (114.1 IP, 82 xFIP-)
Typically, the author would abuse his role as custodian of this daily exercise and assign a sufficiently high discretionary NERD score to a top pitching prospect making his debut — such as Washington’s Reynaldo Lopez is expected to make tonight — so as to render the corresponding game score the day’s highest. Why I haven’t today is on account of two reasons. One, because the success that Lopez experienced at the Double-A level this year didn’t translate to his first (and only) couple starts at Triple-A. Whatever Lopez’s physical virtues, his inability to record significantly more strikeouts than walks in the International League doesn’t bode particularly well for his major-league debut tonight. And for two, because the prospect of a Syndergaard-Arrieta rencontre is a compelling one, for reasons that likely needn’t be catalogued for the benefit of one who’s somehow made his or her way to the end of a paragraph riddled with obscurities.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Miami at Philadelphia | 19:05 ET
Fernandez (107.1 IP, 57 xFIP-) vs. Nola (96.0 IP, 72 xFIP-)
If Benjamin Franklin didn’t say it expressly, then he certainly thought it once or twice: the key in this life is to budget one’s resources properly — not just money, but also one’s energy and one’s time. It’s imperative, this practice, to keeping the mind sana and the body sano.

Today, the author utilized almost the entirety of his alloted time for this post to composing the unwieldy description of NERD’s postseason adjustment, which appears below. As a result, there’s no discussion of today’s most highly rated game.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Philadelphia Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
Baltimore at Tampa Bay | 13:10 ET
Bundy (38.0 IP, 116 xFIP-) vs. Odorizzi (104.2 IP, 101 xFIP-)
A lot hasn’t gone particularly well for Dylan Bundy over the last few years. After having been selected fourth overall in 2011 out of an Oklahoma high school and then promptly dispatching all manner of hitter up to Double-A as just a 19-year-old, Bundy experienced arm trouble which required surgery. Since then, he’s failed to reproduce the ecstatic promise of his first year — failed until this most recent month, that is. One wouldn’t necessarily notice it even by examining Bundy’s full-season numbers, but he’s been excellent recently.

Regard:

That’s Bundy over the most recent month (on bottom) compared to all of Bundy from before that. The difference is stark. More strikeouts, fewer walks, more ground balls — and he’s throwing harder. Which, perhaps that last variable is responsible for the first three: greater arm speed tends to have positive consequences beyond just a better fastball.

Of course, all that’s been in relief because all of Bundy’s career appearances have been in relief. This is his first start as a major leaguer. The point, though: Bundy appears more well prepared to handle a starting role now than the last couple years would lead one to suppose.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Tampa Bay Radio or Baltimore Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game(s)
Cleveland (Bauer) at Minnesota (Duffey) | 19:10 ET
Los Angeles NL (McCarthy) at Arizona (Bradley) | 20:10 ET
These two games receive the same precise score — to the 100th of a point — per the author’s haphazardly constructed algorithm. In the case both of Cleveland and Los Angeles, one finds talented clubs which feature greater than a 50% chance of qualifying for the divisional series. In the case of Minnesota and Arizona, one finds… not that. But then does find, on the other hand, at least a small collection of promising youth. Consider: the Diamondbacks feature the lowest average batters age (weighted by plate appearances) in the majors; the Twins, the fourth-lowest. Jake Lamb (3.2 WAR), Jean Segura (2.0 WAR), Robbie Grossman (1.2 WAR), Miguel Sano (1.0 WAR) are all in the midst of their age-26 season or something less than that, and all have recorded at least a win this year. Observing those two clubs, one is observes the future of baseball. But not literally. And maybe not even that figuratively. Not all of these brief entries are literary gold.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio, Los Angeles NL Television.

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